Alias No. 2: The Girl That Didn't Understand Relationships (Or Really Anything)

I've never really understood how relationships work. When I was a kid, I wasn't ever really near many people my age until I started school. I guess you could say that my parents sheltered me, but at the same time, there weren't many kids in my neighborhood either. For that reason, I've always naturally fallen in with the people old enough to be my grandparents. Since there weren't many children around me, I only had the way my family interacted with each other to learn about relationships and things that were socially acceptable.

I didn't really ever learn about things that were obscene or inappropriate to say or do. I guess my parents thought that if they avoided talking about it, those things wouldn't become a problem. Well, they were wrong. I got in trouble a lot for saying or doing things that weren't okay. I have two distinct memories of daycare and they both involve me getting in trouble and not understanding why which would make me break down. I didn't know it wasn't okay to use my middle finger at any point or say certain words because I just wasn't taught that those things weren't okay. There wasn't a whole lot of privacy around my house so I didn't expect it at daycare either and I hadn't gotten it as a young child, but as an older child there, I was just expected to know and got in trouble when I didn't know.

When I started school, my parents started shipping me with some of the other students in my class (like picking out wedding china level shipping) and because of that, I felt like I always had to have a crush on someone. That's actually caused quite a few problems throughout my life. Since I felt like I had to have a crush from a young age, I ended up crushing on at least one of the guys that my parents shipped me with. The guy I "liked" changed a lot over time and I never really learned the distinction between a crush and friendship. In reality, the difference was that they were all friends because none of them liked me back. If you named a year of school for me, I could tell you a crush I had that year.

I also struggled with physical contact and boundaries. I only really had my family to base all of my learning on and they were quite affectionate. However, this didn't translate well when I was at daycare or school. If I got in trouble, it was usually for being unable to keep my hands to myself because I was an affectionate child. It's the only thing I knew. I got better (at least to the point that I didn't keep getting in trouble) over time, but in elementary school, I was the outcast (more so than normal). I had a group of friends that I hugged every morning and it eventually caused them to pull away from me and I didn't understand why. In hindsight, I know it was partly because of the physical contact and the fact that we all grew apart and had different interests, but at the time, I felt like it was because they didn't want to touch me. This feeling caused me to pull away from all physical contact and at one point, it became the cause of a lot of anxiety. I felt uncomfortable when anyone touched me and sometimes it would cause me to nearly have a panic attack. I felt so uncomfortable in crowds that I tended to avoid them and I'd have to take a time out if someone touched me unexpectedly.

I was also a very nice child. I liked to help others and didn't really understand that the word "no" existed. Because of that, I was often taken advantage of because I didn't mind helping someone with homework or giving advice. I had an inability to distinguish when I was being used from when I had an actual friend and that fault has led me to push away people that care about me and hold people that don't care about me close for longer than I should have. I still have trouble distinguishing those two types of people, but I'm slowly getting better.




I think the thing that was the worst for me was the inability to distinguish feelings of attraction and affection from feelings of friendship. That has caused quite a few problems in my life. It led me to ruin quite a few friendships because I didn't understand the difference between romantic/sexual attraction and friendship. I dated or had a crush on people that I probably wouldn't have if I'd been able to tell the difference and even though I don't regret things that I've done, it's not the greatest feeling ever. To this day, I still question whether the guy I'm currently talking to actually likes me and if I'm mistaking feelings of friendship for feelings of attraction. However, I've gotten a little bit better at distinguishing those things and he knows about them and reassures me often that he loves me because I'm an amazing person and every time I get closer to him on an emotional level and we work together as partners, I realize more and more how the feelings I have for him are different than the feelings I've felt in the past for people I thought I liked. Even though I still don't really understand relationships, it's getting better slowly.